This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
A Common Word Between Us and You did not appear out of nowhere; it was the second half of an exchange that began with controversy. On September 12, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI delivered a lecture at the University of Regensburg that quoted a medieval Byzantine emperor characterizing aspects of Islam in terms many Muslims heard as an accusation of inherent violence. The lecture provoked immediate and widespread protest across the Muslim world. One month later, in October 2006, thirty-eight Islamic scholars representing every major branch of Islam responded not with denunciation but with an Open Letter to the Pope, a considered theological reply rather than a rejection of dialogue itself.
A Common Word Between Us and You, published exactly one year later on October 13, 2007, was the fuller statement that first letter had promised. Initiated by Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad of Jordan through the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, it was signed by 138 Muslim scholars, clerics, politicians and intellectuals spanning academics and muftis from across the globe, nearly half of them university scholars. Where the 2006 letter had answered a specific offense, the 2007 letter reached past it, addressed not only to the Pope but to the leaders of every Christian church, proposing common theological ground rather than merely settling a dispute.